Craig Steven Wright claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto. Is he?
Evaluating his claim will involve a multi-step paternity test
Update: Craig Wright’s claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto come under fire
IMAGINE that the paternity of a particularly brilliant child is in doubt, and someone steps forward to claim he is the father. In the real world a DNA test would sort the matter out quickly. In the confusing world of bitcoin, a cryptocurrency, things are not that simple. From the start bitcoin has rested on a mystery: the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonym of the author of the academic “white paper” published in October 2008 which first outlined the technology behind the digital money. This mystery may finally be solved: Craig Steven Wright—a 45-year-old Australian computer scientist and inventor who was outed against his will and with dubious evidence as Mr Nakamoto in December last year—now claims he is the real Satoshi. On May 2nd he published a blog post offering what he says is cryptographic proof that he is indeed the creator of bitcoin.
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